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Watkins Rapier Wilson Sapphire. Differences ?


kodiakblair
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I've been following an American lad's restoration thread and he's no idea what model he has.

 

The Wilson catalogue list both models but,apart from  £20 in price ,they appear almost identical.

 

brochure5large.jpgbrochure7large.jpg

 

Can anyone clear this up ? Also the 4 way switch, can anybody remember the function ? 

Mine goes Bridge pickup/both pickups/Neck pickup/ Bridge pickup with, I suspect, the cap working. Another lad has a different set up, on his it's the neck pickup appearing twice.

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I bought a new left handed Sapphire in 1969 along with a Wem ER40 and 15" Starfinder cabinet, both from Bell's Music catalogue.  I remember it as being a pretty good and playable bass.  I never had a Rapier though and apart from the price I don't think there was a lot of difference except perhaps for the finish, machine heads and perhaps pickups and sorry, can't remember the switch function, in fact, I can't even remember it having a switch.

 

Nice bass though.

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23 minutes ago, inthedoghouse said:

I used to dream of gear from Bell's catalogue 🙂

The first electric guitar I ever touched was a Watkins Rapier 33.  Knowing what the owner was like for hanging onto gear I wouldn't be at all surprised if he still has it.

I gave it to a mate who painted it rainbow colours.

knowing him he took it to a gig and smashed it.

glad I head butted him when I had the chance, tosser.

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I seem to remember that the Watkins brand was part of WEM who made some pretty good amps. Then the Wilson brand came along after and I think they were the same guitars made by whoever ( probably an Italian co.)  but for a non WEM company when they stopped selling guitars and basses.

Times had changed and imports from more exciting places were available 

 

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I’ll correct my previous post, made in England.

Sid and Reg Watkins made the guitars in their factory in Chertsey Surrey. In the late 60's the decision was made to split the guitars away from the amps as a separate company and the name Wilson was adopted. Wilson wasthe maiden name of the brothers' mother.
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I had a Watkins Rapier 33 guitar about 13 years back, picked it up at the local car boot, cost me £12 for that and a Kay Strat copy that looked like it had been found in a ditch. The Rapier was a really interesting guitar, did a lot of reading & research about them - they were proper garden shed instruments in many ways - no truss rod, hand-wound pickups, switches cannibalised from Morphy-Richards hairdryers & so on. The finish was an odd sort of plastic coating rather than conventional paint/lacquer - very prone to cracking & flaking, probably due to age-related shrinkage - mine wasn't an exception!

The one I had turned out to be a pretty early example - the features & serial put it at around '63, I think. What was good was that everything worked fine, a couple of frets needed re-seating but it played quite nicely after a clean, fettle & re-string. Sold it for around £350, if I remember - which was quite pleasing considering it cost me £6.

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